Events and Updates

Annual General Meeting for FLiSCA – Wednesday 14th October, 7pm at Galleries. Please come along to find out how the profits from the shop have benefitted local clubs, societies and individuals.

We celebrated the refurbished shop space with a party for the community, at which Patrick Dawson spoke eloquently about Galleries:

“So the Galleries is celebrating 17 years with a complete refit and much optimism for the next 17 years. I can illustrate this is in 5 numbers.

Volunteers: 100
hen asked, most people think we have about 50-60 volunteers. Actually, it is 94 plus a number who do a huge amount of work behind the scenes. So the real total is probably 100. The volunteers support each other but also give huge support to people around the villages and many others who need the occasional support. They values they bring are:

• Sense of COMMUNITY and wanting to give something back
• Wanting to do something USEFUL
• Wanting to have FUN and LAUGHTER

Refit: £23,000
A lot have asked how much has been spent. The answer is £23,000 which is split between the new refrigeration units and the the shelving and gondola units. Simon has mentioned the work done by the heavies but to put it context, the contractors quote for just shelving was around £27k. This has all been paid for by The Galleries and no loans have been made by FLiSCA.

More space, more items: 1300 & 12,000
There is much more linear space as well as cupboards. However, we have roughly 1300 stock lines on display with about 12,000 individual items. There is enough room to more as you will see over the next couple of months as Christmas looms.

Turnover, pricing: £400,000
Turnover last financial year was £400k. Although we are run by volunteers there is a very professional business team in the background. Amy has done a really good job since she arrived last year. This has allowed us to hold prices [other than due to inflation], support local producers and sell products that the local community wants. We have lots of items that are very competitive with Aldi and Lidl as well as the big supermarkets.

FLiSCA donation: £14,457
The end result of the very successful 2025-26 financial year is that we will be making a donation of £14,457 to our parent charity, which will increase to over £25,000 when you include our rent. Some of this will be used for future building work and repairs but a very substantial amount will be available for grants to groups in the two villages. We hope that we will raise a further £80-90k over the next 5 years.

Everyone one of you has paid their part making the Galleries a success. The decision to outsource the Café has been really successful. Jon and Nicky with their team including Ola and Mika have kept the buzz about the place. Obviously, there will be challenges with cost-of-living inflation, increased competition from the Supermarkets etc. Currently we are deemed to be a convenience store. We need to up our game and turn ourselves into a super-convenience store which serves the needs of out community.”